After Jesus died on the cross on Friday, they had to get His body prepared for burial and they didn’t have much time because the Sabbath began on sunset on Friday. Joseph of Arimathea and his men took Jesus’ body and buried it in a tomb before sunset. Then after the Sabbath, on Sunday morning the women came to the tomb. Why did the women come? They figured if men prepared Jesus’ body for burial, it probably needed to be redone.
Mary Magdalene and other women went to the tomb and they were the first ones to discover that Jesus had been risen from the dead. Now if the gospel writers were making this whole resurrection thing up, they would have never had women be the first to discover that Jesus wasn’t dead.
In the first century, women had no credibility. A women could not appear and testify in court. A woman's testimony was considered unreliable. If there was any way possible for Matthew, Mark, Luke and John to somehow tell the story of the Resurrection and get the women out of the story, they would have done it. They would have done it because the fact that women were the first people to find the empty tomb discredited the gospel writers’ credibility. Do you know why the gospel writers tell us that women were the first people to discover an empty tomb? Because women were the first people to discover the empty tomb. That's the only reason they would have written women into this story. It was the truth.
And when the two angels show up to talk to the women, they say my favorite Easter verse. It says:
In their fright the women bowed down with their faces to the ground, but the men said to them, “Why do you look for the living among the dead? He is not here; He has risen!" Luke 24:5-6
They asked the women why did they search for the living among the dead? You can kind of hear the sarcasm in their voices. What are you doing here? Living people don’t hang out in tombs. The angels go on to say, “don’t you remember that He talked about this. That He had to be handed over to sinners, had to be crucified and then on the third day He would rise again.” Verse 8 is cool too. It says, “Then they remembered His words.”
The women probably thought we would never search for someone that was alive in a graveyard. They were looking in the wrong place. Jesus isn’t dead anymore. He is not here in the tomb. He has risen. He is alive.
Are you searching for Jesus in the wrong place? He is alive and His resurrection changes everything! Let’s celebrate the resurrection this week at our Good Friday and Easter services! He is not here; He has risen!